Admirable
Crichton
- part of the 50th anniversary season
Playwright - J. M. Barrie
Director - Clive Perry
Designer - Adrian Rees
Lighting Designer - Mark Pritchard
Company - Pitlochry Theatre Company
Venue - Pitlochry Festival Theatre www.pitlochry.org.uk 01796 484626
accessible by rail, bus and by car about 2hrs from centre of Edinburgh.
Dates - see listings for details Runs in rep with other plays, season
ends 13 October 2001
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Pitlochry and Clive Perry are famed for doing things with style and
a respect for theatrical tradition. The Admirable Crichton, Pitlochry's
opening play this season shows that all is well with the "Theatre in
the Hills".
Traditional but not too traditional, this production gains by Perry's
decision to put Barrie on the stage with his creations giving the illuminating
and often comic asides the playwright wrote in his stage directions.
Jimmy Chisholm has the eternal youthful mischievousness and the
curls to carry out his director's bidding, taking this production to
a level of interest which the dialogue alone now can't. Michael Mackenzie
gives the Crichton of the title both life and the unbending centre of
the perfect butler, even after Barrie gives him a cataclysm, a shipwreck
to deal with. Crichton, a stickler for form, doesn't much care for his
master's monthly tea parties with his staff.
In the opening act we see progressive Lord Loam's daughters, the Ladies
Mary, Agatha and Catherine, serving the servants tea. Large in number,
the professional cast is here well augmented by some of The Atholl Players.
Charlotte Fields and Anneli Harrison are hilariously languid
as the vapid younger sisters, whilst Amanda Beveridge is magnificent
as Mary the eldest and the one for whom the cataclysm is most liberating.
Like Diana she strides, clothed in skins with a touch of a Peter Pan
about her, then wrestling to readjust her gait in the last Act. And
there is an Ernest in this play, a Wildean epigramist played deftly
by Steven Kynman. Helen Logan gives her character, Tweeny
all the dash and rough charm Barrie wrote into her, a 1900s Barbara
Windsor.
Like Wilde and Shaw, Barrie was writing plays exploring the social mores
of Edwardian England but he was more for the status quo and for all
to play the game. This Admirable Crichton by using Barrie as
a character, a very strong well directed cast, and costumes and sets
of superb theatrical craftsmanship and design works not only as an entertainment
- it's exciting and vigorous too. As the beginning of this century parallels
the social distortions of the last one's, Pitlochry has opened its 50th
Anniversary Season with a production which is entertaining, high quality
theatre at its best.
© Thelma Good 12May 2001
.jpg)
Jimmy
Chisholm as Barrie Image © Pitlochry Theatre Co
.jpg)
Anneli Harrison
as Agatha, Steven Kyman as Ernest and Amanda Beveridge
as Mary. Image © Pitlochry Theatre Co
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